Tractor Supply plans to open store

By WILLIAM KEESLER The Dispatch

Thursday

Jun 28, 2007 at 10:23 AM

Tractor Supply Co. confirmed Wednesday that it will put a store in the long-vacant Ingles grocery space in Lexington's Parkway Plaza shopping center.Susan Morgenstern, a spokeswoman for the national chain of farm, ranch, and lawn and garden products stores, said mid-October is the estimated opening date for the Lexington store.The facility will offer 16,000 square feet of sales space inside and a roughly equal amount of display space outside, Morgenstern said, and will probably hire 12 to 14 people. By corporate policy, the store's staff must include a welder, a farmer and a horse owner.Brentwood, Tenn.-based Tractor Supply operates about 700 stores in more than 37 states plus one Canadian province. This will be the chain's 29th store in North Carolina. Nearby stores are in Salisbury, Asheboro, Clemmons, Rural Hall, Oak Ridge and Albemarle.But the company concluded there is a need here, too. The chain serves full-time and part-time farmers, ranchers, hobby farmers, horse owners, contractors and trades people, but its largest customer segment is rural and suburban homeowners who do much of the work outside their homes themselves - "self-reliants," as Tractor Supply calls them."We put our stores where our customers are," Morgenstern said.Tractor Supply stores sell more than 13,000 products, including tractor/trailer parts and accessories but not tractors themselves. Other items include riding mowers, large lawn and garden supplies, sprinkler/irrigation parts, fencing, power tools and other tools, equine and pet supplies and feed, work clothes, generators, welding/pump supplies, livestock equipment and horse stalls.The chain's slogan, reflecting its outdoor theme, is "The Stuff You Need Out Here." The company also publishes a magazine, Out Here, which is filled with how-to articles.Signs displayed at Parkway Plaza have said for weeks that Tractor Supply was coming. But Harry Kinder, whose Davie County facilities management company oversees the shopping center, recently said the deal was not finalized.Morgenstern, however, said Tractor Supply does not announce a new store until a lease is signed. A 10-year lease with multiple five-year options to renew has now been signed, she said.The former Ingles store actually contains 32,000 square feet of indoor space - much more than the average Tractor Supply store. Morgenstern said the new store will use some of the extra space for storage but also has the right to sublease the remainder. "That's always a possibility, although nothing is planned yet," she said.The new store is great news for Lexington, which has lost thousands of furniture-manufacturing jobs in recent years and has been trying to fill a number of large, empty store spaces around town. Ingles, one of the anchors of the Parkway Plaza center, closed in August 2002, and its space had remained vacant since.The former Wal-Mart space in Parkway Plaza also has been empty since the new Wal-Mart Supercenter opened on nearby Lowe's Boulevard in January 2006. Other vacant spaces include the former Southern Family Markets grocery store on Lowe's Boulevard, the former Winn-Dixie stores on East Center Street and U.S. Highway 64 West and the former Big Lots store on South Main Street.The Lexington Area Chamber of Commerce and the City of Lexington recently announced a joint effort, with help from ElectriCities, the nonprofit trade organization for cities that sell electrical power in North Carolina, to find occupants for the empty buildings.Radford Thomas, chamber president, said Parkway Plaza and Tractor Supply were talking before the chamber and the city announced their effort, although he thinks previous discussions about empty buildings by chamber leaders helped raise the visibility of the issue and perhaps helped spur real estate efforts to address it.Tractor Supply should be a good tenant for the shopping center and "a good fit for our community as well," Thomas said. "It's kind of a different retail opportunity that will draw people to Lexington, and hopefully they'll find some other places to shop as well."He said he hopes the joint chamber/city effort, which he calls the Retail Redevelopment Task Force, will have some influence in providing Tractor Supply with a new neighbor in the former Wal-Mart building. The task force should have new marketing materials ready for use by the end of July, he said.William Keesler can be reached at 249-3981, ext. 221, or at bill.keesler@the-dispatch.com.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.